Tuesday, July 30, 2013

stitch and read

One good thing about me not having enough creative community, as of yet in my new community, is that in order to make up for that intellectual void I have found the energy to read. I have been attempting to plow my way through subversive stitch for years now but never could and finally am currently less then 40 pages to the feeling of satisfaction you get from a great book that was difficult to read.

Next up either Extra/Ordinary, also attempting to read FOREVER, or re-reading the poetics of space. The poetics of space was huge for me when I was writing my thesis but I feel it will be a very different book to me now that my life and my work has changed so much. I have been picking it up and putting it down for awhile now, reading a bit then losing it in the bedside pile of books. So maybe having a community void will have a good side effect.

recently read quotes from subversive stitch:

By embroidering the virtuous widow she became the virtuous widow- for an embroiderer's personality was considered to be displayed by the form, content and act of embroidering.

Love could not be expressed sexually or passionately, but through the providing of comfort. Comfort becomes the Leitmotif of embroidery. Every stitch was directed towards domestic comfort.

...suggest that in reality the embroiderer experienced a profound lack of intimacy and intellectual deprivation. The need to believe in the domestic dream co-existed with a sharp awareness of absence. Women blamed themselves, shouldered the entire responsibility for domestic comfort- it was, after all, their social sphere.

from Aurora Leigh:By the way, The works of women are symbolic.We sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,To put on your weary - or a stoolTo stumble over and vex you...'curse that stool!"Or else at best, a cushion, where you can leanAnd sleep, and dream of something we are notBut would be for your sake. Alas, alas!Thus hurts most, this- that, after all, we are paidThe worth of our works, perhaps.

2 comments:

I love that you used that image. It's one of my favorites in the Cincinnati Art Museum's collection. The light from the canals is gorgeous! I'll have to take a look at the book you mention. I'm in the post art show funk and need a bit of inspiration.